This gem I would have painted
but the model absconded with
her nakedness, with her delicate pose,
with those long legs stretched
out towards me like the greeting
hands of sex, of thighs like
wild birds on the cusp of flight,
and behind the traffic of her heart,
the slow beats that measure
the value of time as deeply as
my brushes do the finished work.
Interpol, the Turkish police
and the pages of my diary
are out there now, where the
trail is hot, where the trail
is nothing more than muteness,
silence lame as a dog, where
the question "Why?" is mouthed
in doorways, in low dives, in places
where the paint is still not even dry.
Was it the smell of the burnt ocher,
the musky pinks that drove her off?
Or maybe the number of hairs
in the brush, the ones she counted
in response to my request not to move,
not to breathe?
Breathe and you dishonor my dream, I said.
How can I live not breathing,
she must have wondered
behind the brake squeal of her eyes.
Here among the withered tools of my
sorry trade, this gallows easel, the stakes,
the crucifixes of flesh-tones, the executioners
of maybe this time I will get
it right, I curse these thieves
and their seedy dealers in Amsterdam,
well-heeled buyers from America
hanging what never sits still long enough for me
with Goya's Spanish beauty.
But worst of all is the co-conspirator,
emerging from her robe, floating like
a sail into the vision of my thumb,
my eye, my talent, my life lining her up
as my spine succumbs to the watery chill of heaven,
the hot flash of not having.
Worst of all is the one who knows
what I want, who rakes it in with
a sigh, who swallows it whole and
unencumbered, who knows it better
than me I'm sure, who rushes off with it
before I even start.
I stare into the nothingness for clues,
the air honing itself fine as a tear,
mosquitoes bitching at the lack of oxygen.
I am this dialogue between man and
the serious delusion, praying maybe God
will step in somewhere, talk back,
save the day.
I roam this studio landscape,
sift through conversation,
fresh-baked bread, good roasting coffee,
a tune strummed on an old guitar
underneath the balcony of her weeping voice.
I touch the hunger and the merry love,
the mind game and the blackbird peck.
Some things belong to me instinctively.
My struggle to fix them is what
the broken pieces have warned me about.
Back to work, the memory says.
These villains are a million miles
away by this.
Maybe she weeps as she counts the takings.
Maybe she laughs like a witch
on All Souls Night.
Back to work in the land of vacuums,
of Japanese whiskey bottles,
of Picasso prints.
The brushes are heavy,
paint rolls off their bristles,
splatters on the floor beneath,
paints me crudely across the hardwood,
black and red lizard trails,
desperate fallen stars,
paints me considering
the odd tangle of death,
paints me tracing a map
of this last journey
with downtrodden fingers,
paints me wondering who
the artist is
that does this kind of wretched work.
John Grey was born in Australia and has been a US resident since the late 70s. His work has been recently published in Slant, Briar Cliff Review and Albatross, and is forthcoming in Poetry East, Cape Rock and the Mochila Review.
